[STCrowley]

Neil: You illustrate pretty well a point that I think will work against Esperato, eventually, it's not how much work you have to do to learn it, it's what you can do with the language once you know it. And Esperanto seems to be the language-of-choice for people who are pro-globalization and anti-American. I don't think that's a big enough group of people for Esperanto to reach the critical mass it'd need to have for people who ask themselves "How can I better communicate with the world?" to answer with "Hmm. . . I know, Esperanto." Now it's English. In the future, I don't know.

Here's something we haven't touched on in this thread: pidgens. Or, the idea that 'International English' can become a language of it's own. . . When the Chinese gain more international influence, there'd be more Chinese in it. When India gets more influence, it'd have more Hindi influence. . . It could become the kind of 'artificial' standard language like you read about in Sci-Fi. (I'm thinking of the Ender saga by Orson Scott Card.)